Book Review: Stop Working too: YOU Still Can!

In Derek Fosters fourth book Stop Working too: YOU Still Can! he puts forth what you can do, as opposed to what he did do. The author aims to provide low risk and little know strategies that will put money into your pocket instead of your financial advisors. In this book, Derek touches on mortgages, debt, retirement, fees, and investing strategies.

On the subject of debt, practical advice is given in that if you eliminate all of your debt, your financial needs are significantly reduced. Paying down debt is also the number one risk free action that you can take on your road to retirement. If you’re using credit cards (as most of us do!), you should be using credit cards that pay you in the form of rewards and paying off your balance every month to avoid those costly interest charges. If you have a mortgage, do you rate shop or just accept what the bank offers you? Derek points out that by rate shopping your mortgage around, changing your payments to bi-weekly, and making extra payments, you can save significantly in the long term.

The majority of the book talks on the basics of investing principles and vehicles, including your RRSP and TFSA, mutual funds, the couch potato strategy, index funds and re-balancing a portfolio, and dividend reinvestment plans (DRIP). One thing this book contains plenty of is examples, so if you are new to investing, this will be very helpful.

In the last section of the book, Derek outlines the reasons why he liquidated his entire portfolio after the 2008 crash. Although I disagree with some of his reasons and his approach, there are many different investing strategies out there and you have to take the path that you are comfortable with. Despite liquidating his portfolio, Derek put together a table that shows that his investment strategy in dividend paying stocks works and that the overall dividend payout has increased, despite many companies cutting and reducing dividends following the 2008 financial crisis.